


Changing Perspectives

by kitausu



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Getting Together, Happy Ending, Light Angst, M/M, Memories, Mutual Pining, Pining, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, mostly fluff honestly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-04
Updated: 2017-09-08
Packaged: 2018-12-24 00:08:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12000795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kitausu/pseuds/kitausu
Summary: Shiro and Lance looking at each other from different times in their lives





	1. The First Look

**Author's Note:**

> Something that just struck me at the gym this morning. I've been wanting to write a canon universe thing for a while, so this is what happened.

The first time Lance saw Shiro, he had been standing on a stage, smiling sheepishly and accepting an award for "Unparalleled Leadership Skills" back at the Garrison. Lance had been a few seats down, already clutching his Academic Excellence award that had been thrust into his hands with a smile and vague nod from the General the fleet had sent down for the ceremony. 

A few others were seated on the stage too and several looked a little more than pissed. 

Normally, any one of the awards given on the stage would have been cause for huge celebration. There would have been dinners and praise from their teachers and peers, but Shiro dwarfed them all just by being himself.

Lance caught Hunk's eye in the crowd and shrugged. He remembered when Hunk had received the award last year, the teachers hadn't shut up about how prestigious it was and "so young, too". 

Lance didn't mind being relegated to the background though. He was used to it, and it gave him a chance to watch without getting caught. 

Takashi Shirogane. 

Lance felt like his whole word view had shifted on axis, reorienting itself around a distant star, too bright to take notice, or even see him in the shadows. 

It wasn’t like this was the first time Lance had heard of Shiro. He was a legend in the Garrison. He had moved through the program faster and better than anyone before him and now he was about to leave on the Kerberos mission.

Lance fiddled with the award in his hand, cheap plastic manufactured at a recycling plant down the road, no doubt. It was easier to look at the award then to look at Shiro, then to consider the new emotions swirling around in his stomach that he hadn’t expected.

His name wasn’t even spelled right: _Lance_ _McLane._

That sounded about right.

If his mom had been able to make it, she probably would have thrown a fit and had them change it that very day. She was always like that, looking out for her kids more than they ever asked for. It had irritated him to no end when he was a kid and living at home. He missed her.

The sound of clapping woke him from his thoughts and he instinctively looked to Shiro, who was seated in the chair closest to the center of the stage. He was smiling and making dumb faces behind the backs of the General and the Principal.

Lance traced his eyeline to a dark-haired guy around his age, sitting in the front and rolling his eyes, but smiling all the same.

Keith Kogane, that was a face and a name Lance knew well.

Always one step ahead of Lance in classes. And here too, apparently.

He watched as Keith finally stuck his own tongue out just as the General called for them all to stand and for the assembled classes to _give your classmates a round of applause on their achievements!_

Shiro ducked gracefully, easily out of the General’s hold and made his way to Keith as the rest of the room filed out.

Lance swallowed past the lump in his throat and went to find Hunk, who was waiting at the door.

 

The first time Shiro ever saw Lance, he didn’t know who he was. He was at a party that Matt had forced him to go to, supposedly as a goodbye party, but it mostly just seemed like an excuse to have any party.

Keith had elected not to go, the curl of his lip at the mention of a Garrison party easy enough to read. Keith wasn’t much for crowds, and Shiro knew he would send him off in his own way so he let it go. He had even spent a few minutes considering whether Keith had actually had the right idea when he had spotted Lance, or well, the guy he would eventually know as Lance.

When he thought about it later, ages later, with Lance curled into his side and only the soft curls of his hair poking out from the mound of blankets he insisted on sleeping under, it shocked him that hadn’t run over and instantly pulled him into his arms.

Only Lance could look ethereal, dancing in the center of a crowded room, full of too drunk Garrison teens and overturned kegs so the ground stuck to your feet. He moved so effortlessly, his body swaying to the rhythm, arms up like he was communing with some unseen force.

No one ever got too close, or jostled him, as if everyone in the room knew they were close to something beyond them, better than them.

A part of Shiro wanted to go to him, to carry this fae who had stumbled into their world back to his room and never let him leave. The part of Shiro that told him to stay and fight when he should run, who took black eyes and gave them, too, wanted to claim in some primal way.

But the logical part of Shiro’s brain, the part that kept his feet firmly on the ground, remembered that he was leaving tomorrow for who knew how long, that he didn’t even know this guy’s name.

So, he watched, watched as the song ended and the guy’s eyes opened to reveal baby blues, hazy with alcohol and the sweet smoke that filtered through the room. He watched as another guy came over to pass him a drink and how they talked like old friends.

Maybe that guy was his boyfriend?

Maybe he wasn’t interested in men at all.

Maybe Shiro needed to get a grip and remember where he was.

He let Matt lead him into another room and accepted a drink, or three, but his mind never strayed from the fae who had caught his eye.

He filtered in and out of the rooms, drawing Shiro in like a spell at each pass.

A few times, he could have sworn that he saw him looking at Shiro, that they had made eye contact, but then the guy would be gone, flirting with the men and women around him and leaving Shiro with half formed plans starting with _When I get back from the mission…_


	2. The Second Look

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this entire fic is really just an excuse for me to write flowery prose, tbh. thank you for indulging me.

Lance had seen Shiro many times since the award ceremony and the Kerberos mission disaster. How could he not? Shiro was everywhere, plastered across billboards and fliers and etched into marble memorial walls.

He greeted Lance every day when he walked into his room at the Garrison, where newspaper clippings sat piled up on his desk, each bearing Shiro’s face or name.  

It was silly, ridiculous, maybe even a little weird, but Lance couldn’t bring himself to stop collecting the little scraps. He knew he didn’t _know_ Shiro, not really. He had seen him on a stage, just like everyone else and had been drawn in like a moth to a flame.

 He shuffled the papers around on his desk and stopped on the photo from the day the Kerberos mission had left.

Shiro was frozen in time on the front page, arm lifted up over his head as he smiled and laughed in black and white. His hair was flying wild in the wind, the tuft at the front obscuring one of his eyes as he walked up the stairs to the cockpit.

Lance hadn’t been there, stuck in the one class where the teacher wouldn’t let them out to wish them all good luck.

“They’ll be back before you know it, but you’ll never have the chance to learn this again.”

Lance would have rather him been proven right then deal with the fall out of him being proven wrong.

So, even though Lance felt like he had seen Shiro every day in between, the next time Lance saw Shiro up close, he was barely conscious and strapped to a table, Keith standing between them.

“Let me help.”

Keith had scoffed and Lance had known if he had let himself look too closely, the obsession that had been building for months would boil over and paralyze him with indecision and misplaced possession, so he bickered with Keith and tried not to think about the iron line of Shiro’s arm across the top of his back, weighing down his shoulders as they carried him through the hallway.

When they finally made it out to Keith’s little hut in the desert, Lance’s hands shook from adrenaline and a bundle of emotions too tied up to make any sense with the little time they had. He found himself sitting in the corner of the room, drawing circles in the dust on the uneven floor boards, eyes trained on Shiro as he talked with Keith.

Everything about Shiro was different, from the tuft of hair turned snowy white, to the way he carried himself, to the look in his eye.  It was harder to picture this Shiro sitting on a stage, sticking his tongue out at Keith and shot gunning beers in the dim light of a party.

He held his arm, his prosthetic, metal arm slightly away from his body, like he didn’t want to be associated with it or have it touch him more than it already did. When he walked around the room, his heavy soled boots kicked up dust that filtered through the air and nearly made Lance sneeze.

And then he was out the door, Keith on his heels.

Lance ignored the knowing look Hunk gave him and busied himself with talking to Pidge.

He knew he was completely and utterly fucked and didn’t need the pity in Hunk’s eyes to hammer it home.

 

It wasn’t like this was the first time Shiro had seen Lance since before the mission. They had worked together, fought together, taken meals together for months.

But, this was the first time Shiro had made the connection between Lance, his sharpshooter, and the vague hazy dream of a party he barely remembered and a dark-skinned man whose face he couldn’t see, calling him from another room with his hands in the air.

Ever since his memories had started to come back, every night he dreamt of the guy who danced with his arms overhead and mouthed the words with his eyes closed and the lights strobing over his face.

It was almost a shock, to walk into the observation room, to see Lance silhouetted against the vast darkness of space and the purple blue planet they would be visiting the next day and to realize his dreams had finally coalesced into reality, a reality that had been sitting in a blue lion next to him all this time.

“Lance?”

He jumped, too engrossed in his own thoughts to hear even Shiro’s heavy tread on the castle floor.  

When he turned, it was hard for Shiro to make out his face, but he thought he may have been crying.

“Oh, Shiro! Sorry, I didn’t hear you.”

Lance’s smile was small and quiet and Shiro’s heart ached for him, the trembling of his lower lip visible even as the dark room cast his face in shadow.

Without a word, Shiro crossed the room and silently folded himself up next to Lance on the floor. He felt huge and clumsy as he crushed a little of Lance’s blanket burrito under his body, so close he could hear Lance’s startled intake of breath and feel it against the skin of his neck.

“Shiro?”

He could see Lance’s face a little better here, turned towards the light filtering in from the stars and reflecting off the planet below.

It felt like he was seeing him for the first time, Lance, who could shoot a moving target with pinpoint accuracy and charm the room just by walking in, who filtered into Shiro’s dreams every night and lingered even in the daylight.

Lance was looking at him, waiting for something with his face upturned and cheeks tacky with dried tears that he hadn’t bothered to brush away.

“I remembered that night, my last night before I left. I saw you at my going away party. You were beautiful.”

Shiro was looked out the expanse of the window as the unfamiliar planet moved below, like a slow moving giant, observing their little human affairs. He smiled when he felt the weight of Lance’s head shift onto his arm, his chin tucked into his chest in embarrassment. Lance’s hand was warm where it slipped over the exposed skin of Shiro’s forearm and gently tug nails into the soft underside, like pinching to see if it was real.

“I didn’t think you saw me.”

There was so much in that, so much that Shiro wanted to address. But he couldn’t, not right then, not in the warm bubble they had created in the stillness between them.

“I saw you.”

Eventually, Shiro moved so Lance could pull the blanket out from beneath him and drape it over both of their shoulders. He let Lance snuggle into his lap and rocked him slowly, soothingly side to side, his fae, his sharpshooter.


	3. Always Looking

Shiro nibbled on the edge of a cracker, the edges of his mouth pulling down in a grimace at the too bitter taste.

Lance turned away, hiding his grin as Shiro munched on, his nose scrunching up more and more as persevered in the face of their hosts’ expectant smiles.

He had tried to warn him, to steer him away from the table to avoid this exact situation, but Shiro had just laughed and kissed the crown of his head.

“I’m sure it isn’t that bad!”

Well, it wasn’t like Lance hadn’t done is boyfriendly duty.

Shiro would probably be busy playing the diplomat now, carefully crumbling the nearly inedible hors d’oeuvres into a nearby plant. Lance knew he had a little time to then to wander around the room and just observe. He rarely got the chance anymore, Shiro was always taking his arm and pulling him into conversations or training, or sometimes just into his lap for a snuggle.

Lance loved cuddling with Shiro, his whole body dwarfing him as he pulled him to his broad chest and even broader shoulders. It was a good feeling, being wanted, being loved by Shiro.

But, that didn’t mean he didn’t like this, too.

His eyes skimmed over their alien hosts, their red spindly tentacles waving in the air as they communicated, seeking out his fellow paladins.

He finally caught sight of Hunk, his body braced over Keith’s as they leaned against a wall in a slightly obscured corner. That was a new development that Lance wholeheartedly supported.

Keith was a lot easier to be around when his attention was pretty much always focused on Hunk and his face was painted in a permanent shade of red.

(Although, to be fair, Keith was easier to be around now that Lance actually knew him and wasn’t trying to fight him for Shiro’s attention, but that was neither here nor there).

He wondered if they would mind if Lance intruded into their little bubble, but then Hunk was leaning down and their lips were meeting, pressing softly, tentatively, together and Lance turned away. He knew what it was like to try to find a moment of solitude in a crowd.

“What are you doing?”

Speaking of which, Shiro’s voice suddenly so close and hot against the shell of his ear had him melting and momentarily forgetting his surroundings.

“Watching our best friends get freaky in the corner.”

“Oh re—wait…what?”

The heat of Shiro’s body pulled away as he looked around, eventually spotting where Hunk was now palming Keith’s hip and hitching him closer.

“They can’t—I should stop them!”

When Lance turned around, Shiro’s face was purple, his eyes flickering everywhere but where his teammates were very clearly groping each other at a diplomatic party.

A flustered Shiro was a such a cute sight, a rare sight, as his boyfriend was so good at appearing competent and in control no matter the situation. Lance couldn’t stop himself from reaching up with both hands to cup Shiro’s cheeks and guide his gaze back to him.

“I think you should stay here with me.”

Lance tilted his head invitingly towards a currently unoccupied corner of their own, well, actually an alcove, partially obscured by a heavy curtain that Lance may or may not have scoped out for this exact purpose at the beginning of the party.

“Lance…”

Shiro ran his tongue slowly across his bottom, tilting his own head to the side as well, evaluating him with that little smile on his lips that Lance so loved.

“I know, I know, we have to be good examples, even if _those two_ are off—Keith’s right behind me, isn’t he?”

Shiro’s smiled broadened, his teeth peeking out from in between his lips as he nodded behind Lance where Keith and Hunk were both standing, each looking a little worse for wear and pink around the edges.

“Don’t. Say. A. Word.”

Keith looked murderous, although the look was mitigated a bit by how he was tucked up into Hunk’s side like a limpet.

“We got called out by Allura.”

Hunk grinned, twin spots of color high up on his cheekbones but looking otherwise brilliantly pleased with himself.

“Why don’t you two excuse yourselves?”

Shiro had come up behind Lance after he turned and tucked his arms around Lance’s waist, pulling him up tight against Shiro’s chest. He tucked his chin up over Lance’s shoulder, digging in a little into the soft meat of his neck. Lance sighed and tilted back, smiling a little when Shiro absently kissed the exposed swatch of skin, barely noticing Keith’s sarcastically muttered _why don’t_ you two _excuse yourselves?_

“Shiro?”

Allura’s voice carried over the room as she stood at the center of a circle of aliens, her smile broad but demanding as she waved the head of Voltron over to her.

Kissing his neck once, twice, in consolation, Shiro’s arms reluctantly slipped from around Lance’s waist so he could make his way back to the table of terrible food and shake a tentacle or two. Lance watched him go, barely aware of Keith and Hunk taking Shiro’s advice and slipping out the door.

Even when annoyed, Shiro looked so good, so convincing as he smiled and accepted another plate of crackers that he would dutifully choke down.

Lance loved to look at Shiro, but he loved it even more that after all was said and done, he was the one Shiro would complain to later as his stomach revolted against the food and his hands itched from the weird alien goo that clung to their hosts tentacles like sweat.

Living with Shiro, knowing his aversion to spicy food and his sweet tooth and his rituals and annoying habits, it was all so much better than watching him on a stage, accepting an award, or pining over black and white photos that would stain his fingers and fade with time.

 

When Shiro finally got away, bowing slightly, but with an air of finality at Allura, he immediately made a beeline towards Lance, who was playing with several of the alien children at the perimeter of the room.

Lance was amazing with children. He listened to them so earnestly, his eyes wide as if trying to take in everything they said with the same seriousness as a mission debrief.

“Ready?”

Crouched low to the ground, Lance had to turn his big blue eyes up to catch sight of Shiro, his lips already parted around a grin when he finally made it up to his face.

The children pouted, or what Shiro assumed was an approximation of a pout in this species, their ever-waving tentacles drooping a little as Lance told them goodbye and pat them on their octopus like heads.

 Shiro’s arm automatically went to Lance’s waist when he stood, pulling him in tight to his side and keeping his eyes down to avoid accidentally being pulled into another conversation. He watched Lance’s feet instead, the pointed toe of his boot, the blue sheen to the black dress shoes that he had picked up on some trader planet, the slight heel that made a sharp click with every step.

When they finally made it out of the palace and to the field of tall grassy plain that separated it from their lions, Shiro finally pulled away, trailing his hand down the swell of Lance’s forearm to grasp his hand instead.

It felt sweaty in his grip, warm and real and Shiro gripped it tighter in his own human hand.

Lance swung their clasped hands playfully between them, humming _tiptoe through the tulips_ under his breath and taking Shiro’s away with it as the setting sun set his warm brown skin aglow.

“I love you.”

They continued walking, Lance didn’t look at him, but he glowed with radiant happiness as he guided Shiro to the Black Lion, still swinging their hands.

Lance looked ethereal, so much like he did the first night Shiro saw him. But, at the same time, it was completely different, not just the setting but who they were.

He _knew_ Lance now. Lance was water, powerful and eternal, washing over him day after day and always guiding him along like the tide. He wasn’t willowy or ephemeral like he had seemed that first time, a ghostly fae who cast a spell and left. Lance was adaptable, like the water he loved, but ever present, like the oceans on Earth.

When they finally made it to the relative privacy of the shadows of their lions, Shiro backed up against Black’s leg, pulling Lance with him until they were pressed flush together, chest to chest.

“Do you love me, Lance?”

It was a joke between them, asking it like they didn’t know, both of them grinning even as Lance attempted to put on a serious look of consideration.

“Do I love you?”

Shiro hummed and kissed him, tasting the sweet berry punch on his lips, the only thing even remotely edible to a human palate at the whole event.  

“Well Slav would say…”

“Lance!”

Lance giggled, his body shaking helplessly as he tucked himself even closer to Shiro, his head resting on his shoulder instead, eyes looking off back the way they had come.

“I love you, Shiro.”

Shiro clung to him, harder and harder until he reached the extent of his strength, but Lance never complained, taking it all and letting Shiro float for however long he needed.


End file.
